There's quite a lot on Murrell's self-professed meticulousness about ingredients -- like buying only potatoes grown over the 42nd parallel -- but the best part pertains to the restaurant's DC-area roots.

When we first opened, the Pentagon called and said, "We want 15 hamburgers; what time can you deliver?" I said, "What time can you pick them up? We don't deliver." There was an admiral running the place. So he called me up personally and said, "Mr. Murrell, everyone delivers food to the Pentagon." Matt and I got a 22-foot-long banner that said ABSOLUTELY NO DELIVERY and hung it in front of our store.